Clinton returns to Health Care Reform with piecemeal-can it pass, approach

Can one-seventh of the American economy be reinvented over the objections of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries? Will employers who complain about the need for federal action on health care do anything to create the consensus needed to pass a law? Or do current trends continue with in the future even more than today’s 45.8 million uninsured Americans (8.3 million of them children)( up from 39.8 million in 1994) and premiums for family coverage in employer-sponsored insurance continuing to rise after rising 73 percent in the past five years.

Mrs. Clinton (re: the federal funding of the State Children's Health Insurance Program): "I think you should cover all children who don't have other access to coverage. We shouldn't have any uninsured children. But we have to take that step by step."




http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/10/washington/10hillary.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

June 10, 2006
Wounds Salved, Clinton Returns to Health Care

By ROBIN TONER and ANNE E. KORNBLUT
WASHINGTON, June 9 — No policy issue has bedeviled Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more than health care. Ever since the collapse of her proposal for universal coverage in 1994, critics have used the issue as prime evidence in their case that she is, at heart, a big-government liberal with a zeal for social engineering.

But now, as Mrs. Clinton heads into her re-election campaign and a possible bid for the presidency, she is trying to recast the political disaster of 1994 as something else: as a badge of honor, as a symbol of lessons learned and, perhaps most significant, as invaluable preparation for dealing with the problems in the health care system today. <snip>

Mrs. Clinton said she was also closely watching the bipartisan health plan recently approved in Massachusetts. "If you've got an executive and a legislature who are willing to work together," she said, "you can actually make progress."

In a sense, though, the heart of Mrs. Clinton's message seems to be that she is back in the debate. "It's one of my passions, it's what I care deeply about," she said. "It would not be possible for me not to talk about it and try to help change it."